5. Eagles Of Death Metal,
Death By SexyThis is just a cool, fun, rock-n-roll album. It might not be on here if I'd actually bought The Raconteurs CD, though.
4. Deftones,
Saturday Night WristThis was a real pleasant surprise. I got into Deftones with White Pony, which is still one of my favorite albums of all time. The follow-up was very, very heavy and good, but didn't quite have that sonic freakout dreamy fuzz that White Pony had. Chino did more of the atmospheric stuff with Team Sleep, but that was a little
too fuzzed out and didn't have the Deftones' aggro edge.
Saturday Night Wrist struck the balance again. It's a trippy, kind of scary sound throughout. Lots of dense aural textures. I really, really liked this CD.
3. ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead,
So DividedKind of like with Deftones, I got on the Trail of Dead bandwagon two albums ago (well, two albums and one EP), but was a
little let down by the previous album, Worlds Apart. It was a little too heavy on the baroque, chamber music stuff.
So Divided is less chamber musc, more ELO, with some punk rawkishness thrown in.
2. Tool,
10,000 DaysTool's my favorite band, and this CD was really, really, really good, but I can't help but compare it to Lateralus, which I think is the most perfect recording ever made in the history of all existence. Some highlight songs, for sure, but all in all not quite as cohesive an album experience as I like to hear, especially from Tool. It would have been number one just because it's Tool if I hadn't been so kicked in the balls by Brand New's CD.
1. Brand New,
The Devil And God Are Raging Inside MeWhere the hell did this come from? Brand New have put out two albums of kind of anemic emo/screamo stuff that didn't suck, but was definitely not my thing. I'd heard of them and heard a couple of songs, but couldn't have cared less. Then a few weeks ago I was at a record store and the album cover caught my eye. Something about that little girl hiding around the corner....It was on a listening station, so I gave it a shot. The first song was good. The second song was better. I skipped through a few tracks, and none of them sucked, but then I got to the ninth song, "Luca," which I listened to the whole way through, and it kicked my ass. I bought the CD and went out and put it in my car, and I sat there in the parking lot and listened to the whole thing. There are precious few CDs that have blown me away like that (Tool's Lateralus, natch; Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot; The Arcade Fire). Just an amazing, rocking, heavy CD.